


I Am Here

by samusisagirl



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Canon Dialogue, F/M, Slight Canon Divergence, death mention, post all that remains quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 02:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17572484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samusisagirl/pseuds/samusisagirl
Summary: Fenris goes to Hawke after her mother's death and discovers she has moved on. If only he could too.





	I Am Here

"I don’t know what to say, but I am here.”

Fenris walks into her room, moonlight at his back. He doesn’t know why he’s here, either. Well, he knows the superficial reason to why he came. Her mother is dead. He does not want her to feel alone, so he is here. He probably shouldn’t be, not after what has passed between them. And how it ended. Yet, here he is, unsure of why he has come and what he should say. Somehow neither realization is enough to make him leave.

Hawke is sitting on her bed, eyes trained on the fire. She doesn’t even look up at the elf that has just casually strolled into her bedroom via a second story balcony. He really could have used the door, but he did not wish to be seen by Sandal or Bodahn. He wants to keep a few moments secret from the others, who all seem far too interested in his life. And Hawke’s. 

He crosses the room to stand awkwardly beside her. 

“Am I to blame for not saving her?” Hawke asks, her voice barely a whisper. Her hands are in her lap, open and turned up. She looks at them like they are covered in blood.

He swallows hard and sits beside her, his weight dipping the mattress so she leans ever so slightly towards him.

“I could say no, but would that help?”

Her shoulders drop and she buries her face into her hands as a broken sound escapes her throat. Panic seizes his heart, its cold vice-like grip not dissimilar to what he has done to hundreds of beating hearts himself. He told her he didn’t know what to say, and now he has said the wrong thing.

“To be honest, I see no point in filling these moments with empty talk.” His voice is softer this time, and it takes everything in him to stop himself from stroking her back or pull her to his chest as she sobs. It is what one is supposed to do in moments like this. But this is not his place. He should not have come. He has only made her pain worse. He has made her cry.

He shifts his body to leave, but then there is a hand loosely gripping his tunic, and she is the only one that can touch him without making him jump out of his skin. Without making him want to jump out of his skin. 

“Fenris—” She looks up, her tears catching the light from the fire. She looks so afraid. So small. Nothing like the Hawke he knows.

 _Fenedhis._ He curses to himself, curses himself, and wraps an arm around her shaking shoulders, tucking her head underneath his chin as she cries into his shoulder. He closes his eyes and the only sound is the sound of Hawke’s grief and ever so faintly, his erratically pounding heart. He was a fool to leave her. He is still a fool.

I am yours, he wants to say. But it is not the time. 

He does not know exactly how much time passes, but when her breathing steadies and he opens his eyes, the fire has gown down in the hearth, leaving them in a room lit by little more than moonlight. 

“It was kind of you to come, Fenris,” she says, pulling away and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “You’re a good friend.” 

He wants to touch her cheek, taste the salt on her lips. I am yours. Yours. Only yours. But this is not the time, he reminds himself. Perhaps when her wounds are not so fresh. Perhaps then—

Someone clears their throat from across the room and Fenris leaps from the bed, spinning on the intruder. How did he let someone get so close without hearing their approach? He reaches for his sword, only to find it is not there. He thought it inappropriate to climb onto her balcony armed. 

Anders is standing in the doorway, watching him strangely. Though that is not new. The mage is always watching him strangely. 

Anders goes to the hearth and drops a few more logs onto the dying fire, which sputters gratefully and snaps as it devours the wood. “It’s freezing in here,” he says, standing before the fire for a moment before going to close the balcony doors and Fenris’s point of escape. The lock clicks into place as the mage turns the handle, then goes to the windows to draw the curtains closed. 

Those are new, Fenris observes. 

“I didn’t see you come in,” the mage says, his tone trying, and failing, to sound unconcerned. 

There is a familiarity here that Fenris does not like. It makes his skin prickle. 

“What are you doing here?” Fenris asks, none to kindly. 

“Anders—” Hawke starts, but the mage cuts her off.

“This is my home, too.” 

“You—” Fenris glances around the room. Inconsistencies catch his eye, things that were not here the last time he… the only time he was here. A pair of worn men’s boots by the fireplace. A threadbare jacket too big to belong to Hawke draped over a chair. A small embroidered pillow on the bed he has certainly seen before at Ander’s clinic. “You are living with Hawke now?” 

More than living, Fenris realizes. Sharing a room. Sharing a bed. He feels sick. He has no right to feel sick, but the nausea takes him, nonetheless. Ironic that it is the healer that is the one making him ill. 

“What’s it to you?” Anders asks sharply. The mage goes to the bedroom door and holds it open, motioning for Fenris to walk through it and leave them be. 

He acquiesces, his original entrance now closed and locked. He does not belong here. He turns to Hawke before he goes, however.

“I am sorry,” he says. Sorry for so many, many things. She does not look up at him, only says thank you in a voice raw from crying. He can feel her tears against his neck, still damp.

He leaves and expects to have the door slammed behind him, but Anders follows him out into the hall. 

Whatever he is about to say, Fenris cuts him off. “Be good to her,” he says. He takes a little pleasure in the look of surprise on the mage’s face. Anders opens then closes his mouth. It is rare to have rendered him speechless, of all people. Fenris considers leaving it at that, but he can’t help himself. He takes a step closer, meets the mage’s eyes. “If you break her heart, I will kill you.” 

Anders’s shock at Fenris’s kind words evaporates and the mage leans forward, using his superior height to look down at him. “You are one to talk,” he snaps. He glances back to the closed bedroom door and lowers his voice, though it still keeps its venom. “You left.”

Any kindness Fenris considered showing the abomination falls through the cracks into the gutter, never to be seen again. “And you were fast enough to replace me.”

“I love her! You can’t even imagine what that is.” 

But the truth is, Fenris can. He does. 

Those words are not for the mage though. Instead he says, “Do not bare your heart to me, mage, unless you would have me rip it out.”

Anders just laughs. “Don’t you have any other threats, Fenris? I am not so easy to kill as you might think.” 

Fenris is tempted to test that boast, but the mage only shakes his head as if he is disappointed. 

“I don’t know what she ever saw in you,” Anders says under his breath. He knows Fenris can hear him.

“It is done. Leave it be.”

“Good.”

“If you break her heart…” he says again, but lets the words trail away.

Anders just turns and opens the door, leaving Fenris out in the dark hall. The door slowly swings closed, stopping just short of closing completely. He doesn’t know why, or maybe he does, but he stays and watches through the sliver of light as the mage crosses the room to Hawke, a voyeur to an alternative world where he is the one with his belongings in her room—if he had any. Where he is the one that shares her bed. The one she looks at as she looks at the mage now.

He watches as the mage kneels down in front of her, his lips moving, speaking words Fenris cannot hear. His hand is on her thigh, the other brushing hair from her face. Suddenly, she starts crying and Fenris steps forward, ready to tear him away from her, to make good on his threat for making her cry again, but then she is moving off the bed to wrap her arms around the mage’s neck and he cradles her in his lap and kisses her hair and Fenris turns to leave. 

Leaving her once was the hardest thing he’s ever done, and now he is leaving again. Leaving her with him.

And he feels… he _feels_. That itself is a surprise. 

And it hurts. Hurts more then the lyrium branding his skin. Hurts somewhere that can never be soothed with a salve or a bottle of wine, though wine might help. If he could, he would rip out his own heart to stop the pain. 

But his heart is hers. It will always be hers. And he will continue to follow her to whatever strange places she might lead, because, and the realization hits him like a bolt of lightning or a sword through the chest, nothing could be worse than the thought of living without her. 

Even if she can never be his.


End file.
